Sunday, August 12, 2012

Derrick Leon Jackson

Executed July 20, 2010 06:20 p.m. CDT by Lethal Injection in Texas

Summary:
Forrest Henderson and Alan Wrotenberry were Houston Grand Opera singers
who lived in Henderson’s apartment.Wrotenberry was also employed at
Deer Park Elementary School as a music teacher. When he failed to
appear for work police were called and found Wrotenbery’s body on the
floor of his bedroom. He was wearing only a pair of swimming trunks. In
the other bedroom, officers found the nude body of his roommate,
Forrest Henderson. Blood was all over the bedroom walls, doors, and
curtains. Police found a bloody metal bar in the hallway and a bloody
knife in the kitchen sink. Both victims had been beaten and repeatedly
stabbed/slashed. The wallets of both were missing and Henderson’s car
was gone. There were no signs of forced entry into the apartment. For
seven years the murders went unsolved. Then, in 1995 a sophisticated new
fingerprint technology linked a bloody print from Henderson’s
apartment to Derrick Jackson, a Houston man serving 12 years for an
unrelated aggravated robbery. Following this identification, police
also matched the blood and DNA evidence from the crime scene to
Jackson, who denied any involvement.

AUSTIN –
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott offers the following information
about Derrick Leon Jackson, who is scheduled to be executed after 6
p.m. on Tuesday, July 20, 2010. A Harris County jury found Jackson
guilty of capital murder for killing Forrest Henderson and Alan
Wrotenberry.

FACTS OF THE CRIME

Forrest
Henderson and Alan Wrotenberry were Houston Grand Opera singers who
lived in Henderson’s apartment. On Monday, September 12, 1988,Alan
Wrotenberry failed to appear for work at Deer Park Elementary School,
where he was employed as a music teacher. At 9 a.m., the school
principal contacted Henderson’s apartment manager to check on
Wrotenberry. The manager unlocked Henderson’s apartment door and found
nothing disturbed in the living room and kitchen. He proceeded to one
of the bedrooms, pushed open the door, and saw a body covered with
blood. He promptly left and called 911.

Police
officers arrived at the apartment soon thereafter and detected no signs
of forced entry. They found Wrotenberry’s and Henderson’s bodies in
their respective bedrooms at opposite ends of the apartment.

Henderson’s
nude body was lying face-down in his bed, and Wrotenberry’s body, clad
only in a pair of swimming trunks, was lying on the floor of his
bedroom. Police found a bloody metal bar in the hallway and a bloody
knife in the kitchen sink. Blood was all over the bedroom walls, doors,
and curtains. Both victims’ wallets were missing, and Henderson’s car
was gone. Two or three days later the car was recovered after a chase
following a burglary at a mall, but the driver was not apprehended.
Apart from the burglary, police recovered no other evidence from the
car.

A
forensic pathologist testified that Alan Wrotenberry suffered a severed
carotid artery, cuts to the vertebrae, and at least three blows to the
back of the head with a narrow blunt instrument, such as a pipe.
Forrest Henderson received a shallow, non-fatal cut to the neck,
defensive wounds on both arms, a six-inch fracture of the skull from
blunt force, and multiple stab wounds to the torso. Fixed lividity in
both bodies signified that both victims were dead for more than eight
hours before they were found.

Blood
samples and 20 identifiable fingerprints were collected from the crime
scene, but the Houston Police Department (HPD) was unable to develop
leads to a suspect.

In 1995,
HPD upgraded to a new fingerprint system with an expanded database.
The new system matched Jackson with prints lifted from a beer can and a
glass tumbler in Henderson’s bedroom. A bloody print found on
Henderson’s bedroom door also matched Jackson. An HPD serologist
testified that type-B blood was found on a bedroom door. Jackson is
blood-type B; both victims were blood-type A. Police found no other
identifiable blood type sample at the crime scene. A DNA expert
testified that Jackson’s DNA profile matched DNA from stains on a red
towel and a beige towel located in Henderson’s bathroom.

David
Trujillo, who lived next door to Henderson and Wrotenberry, told police
that around 10:30 p.m. on September 10, 1988, he heard music and
Henderson’s voice through the common wall separating their apartments.
Trujillo went to sleep around 2 a.m. and was awakened at 4:45 a.m. by
the sound of Wrotenberry screaming “Oh my God. No. No,” several times.
Trujillo also heard what sounded like someone being hit numerous times
with a pipe or baseball bat. After 30 minutes of silence, he heard the
water running for about 45 minutes. Trujillo never heard Henderson’s
front door open or anyone leave.

THE PENALTY PHASE EVIDENCE

The
State presented evidence that Jackson snatched a woman’s purse in 1990.
The State also presented evidence that Jackson robbed two other
victims of their purses at gunpoint, and attempted to steal a car.

Derrick
Leon Jackson, 42, was executed by lethal injection on 20 July 2010 in
Huntsville, Texas for the murder of two men in their apartment.

On
Monday, 12 September 1988, Alan Wrotenbery, 31, failed to appear for
his job as a music teacher at Deer Park Elementary School in east
Harris County. The school principal contacted the manager of the
Greenway Plaza-area apartments in central Houston where Wrotenbery
lived. The manager unlocked the apartment and went inside. He saw
nothing disturbed in the living room or kitchen, but upon proceeding to
one of the bedrooms, he found a body covered with blood. He promptly
left and called 9-1-1.

Police
officers arrived and found Wrotenbery’s body on the floor of his
bedroom. He was wearing only a pair of swimming trunks. In the other
bedroom, officers found the nude body of his roommate, Forrest
Henderson, 31, lying face-down in his bed. Blood was all over the
bedroom walls, doors, and curtains. Police found a bloody metal bar in
the hallway and a bloody knife in the kitchen sink. Both victims’
wallets were missing, and Henderson’s car was gone. There were no signs
of forced entry into the apartment.

A
forensic pathologist testified that Alan Wrotenbery suffered a severed
carotid artery, cuts to the vertebrae, and at least three blows to the
back of the head with a narrow, blunt instrument, such as a pipe.
Forrest Henderson had a six-inch skull fracture caused by blunt force,
and multiple stab wounds on his torso. He also had a shallow, non-fatal
cut on his neck and defensive wounds on both arms. The victims had
been dead for more than eight hours before they were found.

Police
collected blood samples and fingerprints from the crime scene,
including a fingerprint from a glass tumbler in Henderson’s bedroom and
a bloody print found on his bedroom door. They also picked up a DNA
sample from blood stains on some bathroom towels. Despite this
evidence, they were unable to develop leads to a suspect.

David
Trujillo, who lived next door to the victims, told police that at
around 4:45 a.m. on 11 September, he was awakened by the sound of
Wrotenbery screaming “Oh my God. No. No.” several times. He also heard
what sounded like someone being hit numerous times with a pipe or
baseball bat. After 30 minutes of silence, he heard the water running
for about 45 minutes. Trujillo never heard Henderson’s front door open
or anyone leave. Trujillo later testified that he often saw “street
trash” entering and leaving the apartment when Henderson lived there
alone, and that screaming and fighting were common there. The rowdiness
subsided after Wrotenbery moved in, he said.

On the
morning of 13 September, Houston police spotted a car going more than
90 mph on the freeway following a burglary at a mall. The car crashed
in a vacant lot. The driver fled on foot into an apartment complex and
escaped. The car was identified as Henderson’s. No other evidence was
recovered from it.

In 1995,
the Houston Police Department upgraded to a new fingerprint system
with an expanded database. Using this new system, they obtained a match
with Derrick Jackson, who was sent to prison in 1992 with a 12-year
sentence for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. Following this
identification, police also matched the blood and DNA evidence from the
crime scene to Jackson.

On the
night of the murders, Henderson and Wrotenbery, who were both tenors in
the Houston Grand Opera, attended a practice session downtown.
Afterward, Wrotenbery returned to the apartment while Henderson visited
some Montrose bars. Police claimed that Henderson picked up Jackson in
a bar and brought him home. They characterized Jackson as a predator
who targeted gay men.

A jury
convicted Jackson of capital murder in March 1998 and sentenced him to
death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and
sentence in May 2000. All of his subsequent appeals in state and
federal court were denied.

Jackson
denied involvement in the murders in an interview from death row. “It’s
obvious I’m getting framed,” he said. “I’m not your bad guy. People
who know me know I’m a good guy … I hate the fact that I’m being blamed
and will be killed, but it’s more sadness than hate.”

At his
execution, Jackson did not make eye contact either with his own family
or the victim’s relatives. He declined to make a last statement. The
lethal injection was given, and he was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m.

HUNTSVILLE,
Texas — A man who maintained he was unfairly convicted of the 1988
slayings of two Houston opera singers was executed Tuesday evening.
Derrick Jackson, 42, was put to death for the fatal beatings and
slashings of Forrest Henderson and Richard Wrotenbery. The two
31-year-old men were in the Houston Grand Opera chorus.

Their
September 1988 slayings inside Henderson’s apartment went unsolved for
years until a bloody fingerprint from the murder scene was matched to
Jackson. By then, in 1995, Jackson already was in prison serving a
12-year term for aggravated robbery.

Jackson
said nothing when the warden asked if he would like to make a final
statement. He never moved, staring at the ceiling of the death chamber,
as the lethal drugs began, then gasped several times as they took
effect. Eight minutes later, at 6:20 p.m. CDT, he was pronounced dead.

Jackson’s
father, who wept quietly, and two brothers were among people watching
the execution. Carl Wrotenbery, the father of one of his victims, was
in an adjacent witness room. No last-day appeals were made to the
courts Tuesday to try to block the 15th lethal injection this year in
Texas, the nation’s most active death penalty state. The Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals rejected an appeal Monday, and the Texas Board of
Pardons and Paroles turned down a clemency request.

In a
recent interview from death row, Jackson told The Associated Press he
didn’t want to die but wasn’t scared. “It’s more a reluctance that it
had to come to this,” he said. “It’s like you have terminal disease for
a number of years and finally they say you’re not going to be able to
live with it any longer so you’re going to have to get your affairs
together with your family and within yourself.”

Jackson
was arrested in 1992 for three robberies and took a plea bargain that
sent him to prison. He was there when detectives working cold cases and
using new computer databases matched his fingerprint to one at the
scene of the murders.

Jackson
said bad decisions led to burglaries and robberies and ultimately the
prison term, but he denied involvement in the killings. Fingerprints
on a beer can, a glass and a door knob were linked to Jackson. Stains
on bathroom towels matched his DNA. “Technology caught up with him,”
said Bill Hawkins, a Harris County district attorney who prosecuted the
case. Hawkins said the odds against the DNA match actually belonging
to someone other than Jackson were “off the charts.”

Richard
Wrotenbery also taught music at an elementary school in the Houston
suburb of Deer Park. He’d been house-sitting at Henderson’s apartment
following a divorce until he could find a place of his own. Henderson
had just returned to Houston after performing with the opera in
Scotland. The day of the slayings, Sept. 10, 1988, Wrotenbery and
Henderson, both tenors, had been rehearsing for an opera production of
Bizet’s Carmen. Wrotenbery went to the apartment after rehearsals.
Jackson hit some bars, may have met Jackson there and took him home.

Evidence
showed Henderson was stabbed in the chest. Wrotenbery’s throat was
slashed. Both were bludgeoned with a heavy metal bar that could have
been part of a weight set. Wrotenbery may have been asleep when he was
killed.

“I’m
relieved that it’s over,” Carl Wrotenbery, 80, said after watching his
son’s killer die. “It’s something that had to be done. I did not look
forward to it.” He said he came to Huntsville from his home in Fort
Worth, about 175 miles away, out a “sense of duty and responsibility”
to his family and that he found Jackson’s silence at the end
“disappointing” but not unexpected. “I didn’t expect any pleasure and I
certainly didn’t receive any,” Wrotenbery said.

Jackson
said from prison he realized “two people lost their lives and I feel
for their families.” “I saw the pictures. It was a savage scene,” he
said, adding that he understood jurors had to “do something when two
guys were killed like that.” But when they found him guilty, “It kind
of blew me away,” he said. “I didn’t do it.”

The
men’s wallets were taken along with Henderson’s car. A Houston traffic
officer tried to pull over the car for speeding, but the driver fled,
leading police on a chase until the car crashed. The driver managed to
run off and escape. An administrator from the school district where
Wrotenbery taught called the apartment manager when the teacher didn’t
show up for work. The manager found the bloody scene.

At least three other condemned killers in Texas have execution dates in the coming months.

HUNTSVILLE,
Texas — A man who maintained he was unfairly convicted of the 1988
slayings of two Houston opera singers was executed Tuesday evening.
Derrick Jackson, 42, was put to death for the fatal beatings and
slashings of Forrest Henderson and Richard Wrotenbery. The two
31-year-old men were in the Houston Grand Opera chorus.

Their
September 1988 slayings inside Henderson’s apartment went unsolved for
years until a bloody fingerprint from the murder scene was matched to
Jackson. By then, in 1995, Jackson already was in prison serving a
12-year term for aggravated robbery.

Jackson
said nothing when the warden asked if he would like to make a final
statement. He never moved, staring at the ceiling of the death chamber,
as the lethal drugs began, then gasped several times as they took
effect. Eight minutes later, at 6:20 p.m. CDT, he was pronounced dead.

Jackson’s
father, who wept quietly, and two brothers were among people watching
the execution. Carl Wrotenbery, the father of one of his victims, was
in an adjacent witness room. No last-day appeals were made to the
courts Tuesday to try to block the 15th lethal injection this year in
Texas, the nation’s most active death penalty state. The Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals rejected an appeal Monday, and the Texas Board of
Pardons and Paroles turned down a clemency request.

In a
recent interview from death row, Jackson told The Associated Press he
didn’t want to die but wasn’t scared. “It’s more a reluctance that it
had to come to this,” he said. “It’s like you have terminal disease for
a number of years and finally they say you’re not going to be able to
live with it any longer so you’re going to have to get your affairs
together with your family and within yourself.”

Jackson
was arrested in 1992 for three robberies and took a plea bargain that
sent him to prison. He was there when detectives working cold cases and
using new computer databases matched his fingerprint to one at the
scene of the murders.

Jackson
said bad decisions led to burglaries and robberies and ultimately the
prison term, but he denied involvement in the killings. Fingerprints
on a beer can, a glass and a door knob were linked to Jackson. Stains
on bathroom towels matched his DNA. “Technology caught up with him,”
said Bill Hawkins, a Harris County district attorney who prosecuted the
case. Hawkins said the odds against the DNA match actually belonging
to someone other than Jackson were “off the charts.”

Richard
Wrotenbery also taught music at an elementary school in the Houston
suburb of Deer Park. He’d been house-sitting at Henderson’s apartment
following a divorce until he could find a place of his own. Henderson
had just returned to Houston after performing with the opera in
Scotland. The day of the slayings, Sept. 10, 1988, Wrotenbery and
Henderson, both tenors, had been rehearsing for an opera production of
Bizet’s Carmen. Wrotenbery went to the apartment after rehearsals.
Jackson hit some bars, may have met Jackson there and took him home.

Evidence
showed Henderson was stabbed in the chest. Wrotenbery’s throat was
slashed. Both were bludgeoned with a heavy metal bar that could have
been part of a weight set. Wrotenbery may have been asleep when he was
killed.

“I’m
relieved that it’s over,” Carl Wrotenbery, 80, said after watching his
son’s killer die. “It’s something that had to be done. I did not look
forward to it.” He said he came to Huntsville from his home in Fort
Worth, about 175 miles away, out a “sense of duty and responsibility”
to his family and that he found Jackson’s silence at the end
“disappointing” but not unexpected. “I didn’t expect any pleasure and I
certainly didn’t receive any,” Wrotenbery said.

Jackson
said from prison he realized “two people lost their lives and I feel
for their families.” “I saw the pictures. It was a savage scene,” he
said, adding that he understood jurors had to “do something when two
guys were killed like that.” But when they found him guilty, “It kind
of blew me away,” he said. “I didn’t do it.”

The
men’s wallets were taken along with Henderson’s car. A Houston traffic
officer tried to pull over the car for speeding, but the driver fled,
leading police on a chase until the car crashed. The driver managed to
run off and escape. An administrator from the school district where
Wrotenbery taught called the apartment manager when the teacher didn’t
show up for work. The manager found the bloody scene.

At least three other condemned killers in Texas have execution dates in the coming months.

Forrest
Henderson and Richard Wrotenbury, were singers in the Houston Grand
Opera. Shortly before his death, Henderson toured with the opera in
Scotland. Wrotenbury moved into Henderson’s Houston apartment to
house-sit while Henderson was out of the country and continued to live
in the apartment after Henderson returned.

David
Trujillo and Roger Lindgroff lived next door to Henderson and
Wrotenbury. At around 10:30 p.m. on September 10, 1988, Trujillo heard
music and Henderson’s voice through the common wall separating their
apartments. Trujillo went to sleep around 2:00 a.m. and was awakened at
4:45 a.m. by the sound of Wrotenbury screaming several times, “Oh my
God. No. No.” Trujillo also heard what sounded like someone being hit
numerous times with a pipe or a baseball bat. After 30 minutes of
silence, he heard the water running for about 45 minutes. Lindgroff
started to knock on their neighbor’s door to see if there was a
problem, but Trujillo called him back inside. Lindgroff did not testify
because he was deceased at the time of trial. Trujillo never heard
Henderson’s front door open or anyone leave. A person could enter or
leave Henderson’s apartment via a separate stairwell, however, without
having to pass by Trujillo’s door. Trujillo explained that, before
Wrotenbury moved in, he would see “street trash” going in and out of
Henderson’s apartment, that the apartment was a rowdy place, and that
there was always some kind of screaming and fighting going on over
there. Since Wrotenbury had moved in, however, the rowdiness had
subsided.

Besides
the opera, Wrotenbury also worked as a music teacher at Deer Park
Elementary School; but on Monday, September 12, 1988, he failed to
appear for work. At 9:00 a.m., the school principal contacted
Henderson’s apartment manager to check on him. The manager unlocked
Henderson’s apartment door and found nothing disturbed in the living
room and kitchen. He proceeded to one of the bedrooms, pushed open the
door, and saw a body covered with blood. He promptly left and called
911.

Police
officers arrived at the apartment soon thereafter and detected no signs
of forced entry. They found Henderson’s and Wrotenbury’s bodies in
their respective bedrooms at opposite ends of the apartment.
Henderson’s nude body was lying face-down in his bed, and Wrotenbury’s
body, clad only a pair of swimming trunks, was lying on the floor of
his bedroom. Absence of significant blood in the hallway connecting the
two bedrooms indicated that neither victim left his room during or
after the attacks. Police found a bloody metal bar in the hallway and a
bloody knife in the kitchen sink. Blood was all over the bedroom
walls, doors, and curtains. Both victims’ wallets were missing, and
Henderson’s car was gone.

Henderson’s
car was involved in a burglary of a Montgomery Wards store two to
three days later. Police engaged in a high speed chase with the
perpetrators, who wrecked the car and fled before police could catch
them.

The
forensic pathologist testified that Alan Wrotenbury suffered a severed
carotid artery, cuts to the vertebrae, and at least three blows to the
back of the head with a narrow blunt instrument consistent with a pipe.
The force of one of the blows Wrotenbury received knocked out a tooth.
Forrest Henderson had received a shallow, non-fatal cut to the neck,
defensive wounds on both arms, a six-inch fracture of the skull from a
blunt force, and multiple stab wounds to the torso. Fixed lividity in
both bodies signified that both people had been dead for more than
eight hours.

Tests
performed on both victims revealed no signs of drugs, alcohol, or
semen. Blood samples and 20 identifiable fingerprints were collected
from the crime scene, but the Houston Police Department was unable to
develop a suspect. In 1995, HPD upgraded to a new fingerprint system
with an expanded database. The new system matched Jackson with prints
lifted from a beer can and a glass tumbler in Henderson’s bedroom. A
bloody print found on Henderson’s bedroom door also matched Jackson. An
expert in blood-spatter interpretation testified that the bloody
fingerprint could have been formed only by touching a blood drop while
the blood was still wet–as opposed to a blood drop landing on an old
fingerprint. An HPD serologist testified that type-B blood was found on
a bedroom door. Jackson is blood-type B; both victims were blood-type
A. Only these blood types were detected at the crime scene. The State’s
DNA expert testified that Jackson’s DNA profile matched DNA isolated
from blood stains on a red towel and a beige towel located in
Henderson’s bathroom. The odds that another African-American would
possess the same profile is one in 7.2 million. Further, DNA analysis
could not exclude Jackson as a contributor of the blood mixture
covering the metal bar.